


Your Lie in Winter

by RomanticComrades



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers, 四月は君の嘘 | Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso | Your lie in April
Genre: Alternate Universe - Classical Music, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso | Your Lie in April Fusion, Angst and Tragedy, F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-01-12 22:56:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18456311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RomanticComrades/pseuds/RomanticComrades
Summary: "Observers say that Braginsky’s hands seem to fly over the piano without ever touching the keys, instead drawing sound from deep within the instrument. His playing was masterful, certainly, but there was something more in his music. Listeners could peel back its layers and find hints of an untold story.The story of another musician he once knew. The story of the first and only person with whom Ivan had ever fallen in love."





	1. Prelude

Ivan Braginsky.

No one could remember when they first heard of him. He had been household name in the classical music scene for quite some years now—a decade, at least. The Russian pianist, whose deceptively large frame told nothing of the delicacy and sensitivity of his playing, had become known not simply for his virtuosity, but for something his audience couldn’t quite grasp.

He had a few moments of fame in his early childhood—one of Russia’s many musical prodigies—but at what was thought to be the height of his renown, he vanished. When he re-emerged in the public eye in his mid-teens, he had become unrecognizable. 

Not much has changed since then. Observers say that Braginsky’s hands seem to fly over the piano without ever touching the keys, instead drawing sound from deep within the instrument. His playing was masterful, certainly, but there was something more in his music. Listeners could peel back its layers and find traces of an untold story.

The story of another musician he once knew. The story of the first and only person with whom Ivan had ever fallen in love. 

His name was Wang Yao. Ten years ago, he passed away, leaving Ivan with a confession, handwritten and tucked into an unexpected corner of a familiar place. That letter was all Yao had left Ivan.

That, and a thousand reasons to keep playing.

And one day, Ivan decided to write back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Thanks for reading! The rest of this fic is still in progress, and I wasn't sure if I should keep working on it—I don't know if there are many Hetalians who have seen YLIA or enjoy classical music. If you'd be interested in reading more of this, I'd really, really appreciate it if you leave a kudo or a comment.


	2. Blumenstück

December 24, 2029

* * *

 

_Yao,_

_I feel ridiculous, writing to you like this. But Decembers are hard for me, and this one has been the worst yet. I should be on tour this time of year, somewhere overseas, or at least home in Russia, far enough away from everything to stay sane, but I just happen to be back in New York this year, and it still feels odd that, well, you’re not._

_In any case, it’s about time I wrote you back. There’s too much that I didn’t get a chance to say to you, and I need to say it somehow._

_Ten years ago today, you barged into my life with no warning and turned it on its head—no, not just that. You became my life. Then, as quickly as you had arrived, you just...vanished._

_I still have the letter you left me. I’ve read it so many times that I know it by heart. Now, I have it folded into a tiny square and hidden into a locked drawer—I can’t stand the idea of something happening to it. It’s the only piece of you I can still hold onto._

_Snap._

Ivan jerked up at the sharp crack, realizing that he had broken off the tip of his pencil. The fragment of lead rolled to the side, leaving a smear of charcoal across the page before plummeting off the side of the table.

Smiling wryly, he scanned what he had written without quite processing the words. He had been pressing too hard, he noticed; his pencil lines had left deep, unusually jagged impressions on the sheet of paper. Suddenly, he became aware that he was still gripping onto his pencil, so tightly he could snap it in half as easily as he could a piece of lead. His hand trembled.

_Relax, Ivan._

A glass vase of sunflowers sat at the corner of the table. They had been left outside his apartment door earlier that day, a sad, wilting bouquet, tossed aside with the ever-rising heap of cards and chocolates and other flowers.

Some fans had somehow gotten ahold of Ivan’s address years ago, and since then, it had become public information. Alfred and Natalya were always nagging at him to move somewhere safer, but Ivan didn’t mind it much. The fans left him alone most of the time, leaving behind gifts and fanmail instead. Ivan Braginsky was more charming from a distance, they knew. They probably also knew that Ivan would leave their offerings untouched, but that didn’t keep them from trying.

 _After all, Braginsky is a damaged musician, and_ I _can be the one who changes him,_ they all believed, and continued to believe as the piles and piles of drugstore roses lay in the doorway until their petals shrivelled up and cut themselves loose, or until the caretaker came to take out the trash.

But that morning, not even Ivan could ignore the flash of yellow demanding to be seen among the pinks and reds.

Sunflowers were an unusual choice. Not many florists were willing to sell them in the middle of the winter, and it wasn’t hard to see why. Upon a closer look, the petals were not so much yellow as they were a sickly, greenish hue, curling inwards as though to hold themselves out of shame.

As he stared at the flowers, tossed aside and withering, Ivan had felt a tightness at the back of his throat. Before the tears could come, he had picked up the bouquet and dipped the stems in a vase filled with water.

For some reason, all this came back to Ivan now. He smiled wryly at the flowers; they weren’t looking much better, but perhaps they would manage to live a day longer. 

With that bit of reassurance in mind, he turned his attention back to the letter in front of him.

_It’s snowing today. It must have been snowing too, on the day we met. I don’t know if you were expecting me to be there, but if you had, you must have been disappointed..._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to get at least a couple of chapters out before April ends, so here you go! I'm still trying to figure out which characters I'm going to use to replace Tsubaki and Ryouta—the love triangle stuff is a pretty big part of the plot, and I want to do it right. 
> 
> I've also decided that every chapter is going to be named after a classical piece. I don't know if I know enough pieces to pull this off, but...it should be cool! The title of this chapter, Blumenstück, is named after a piano work composed by Robert Schumann for his then fiancée, Clara Wieck. It's meant to portray the idea of flowers associated with love, so I thought it would be fitting.


	3. Kinderszenen

 

December 24, 2019

* * *

The door flew open, and Ivan could tell by the ensuing surge of cold air that it was Natalya.

“I qualified,” she announced, for the competition.”

“Oh? Congratulations.” He spoke cautiously. The door fell shut behind Natalya, and the air grew still, the calm before a storm.

“It’s only because Americans are so incompetent.” She surveyed the cramped apartment, eyes clouding as they fell upon the piano, on which a layer of dust had gathered. A few feet away, Ivan sat on the couch, scribbling in a notebook. “They asked about you.”

Ivan blinked. “Who?”

“The adjudicators. They thought it was  They were wondering if you still play.”

“Well, tell them I don’t.”

“That’s a lie. I saw you playing last night in the school music room.”

“That’s different. I arrange pop songs for piano—it’s my job.”

“You couldn’t have gotten a job at a fast food restaurant like the rest of us?”

“I can work from home. It’s easier.”

“Excuses.”

“It’s not an excuse! It leaves me more time to do homework.”

Natalya whirled around suddenly. “You can’t seriously tell me you _like_ this! Memorizing Shakespeare and the periodic table and trignography—”

“Trigonometry.”

“Don’t interrupt me! What do you need to know that for, anyway? Are you going to spend your life drawing graphs and memorizing equations?” She snatched the notebook from his hand and glanced it, eyes narrowing in disgust. As always, it was the same _x_ and _y_ in a thousand different guises, and here Ivan was, staring at lines and lines of them, solving for the same variables, over and over again, like a toddler learning to count. “It’s a waste of your time and you know it.”

“Isn’t wasting time a part of what it means to be a high school student in America?” Without much enthusiasm, Ivan reached for his notebook, but Natalya kept it out of his reach.

“But that’s just it! You’re not just some American high school student. You’re Ivan Braginsky, child prodigy and the pride of Russian music. You don’t win international competitions at eight years old to be stuck doing _this_ !” She slammed the notebook back onto his desk. “You got an acceptance letter from Juilliard when you were _eleven_. You were well on your way to becoming a world-class pianist, and you just...drop out?”

“I’m not a pianist anymore, Nata.”

Ivan’s response was as vacant as his smile. His eyes would not meet hers; they drifted towards the shelf at the back of the room, on which a trophy had been placed and forgotten—his days of glory, reduced to a chunk of carved glass, engraved with a name and a date like a tombstone. 

“You don’t mean that.”

Ivan ignored her, scribbling something else in his notebook.

“You don’t mean that! Look at me.”

“I need to work—”

“For Christ’s sake, Ivan, _look at me_.”

The threat in her voice forced him to lift his head. He forgot to avoid her eyes and saw that there was something blazing in them, bursts of electric blue flame.

“You might be terribly out of practice. Your piano might be unforgivably out of tune. But you’re still a musician, and you’ll never stop being a musician.”

“Nata—”

“I know you better than anyone, don’t I, Vanyushka?”

 _Vanyushka_. Ivan hadn’t heard that name in years. The diminutive sounded foreign to him, the consonants too tender for Natalya’s sharp tongue. It reminded him of spring in Saint Petersburg, its hesitant warmth threatening to flicker out.

* * *

Petersburg was where he’d first met Natalya, and from that moment on, he had been terrified of her. She had simply shown up on the Braginskys’ doorstep one day, demanding to meet the woman who had taught Ivan Braginsky how to play. She wanted to learn from the best, she had explained, and she had come all the way from Belarus to do it. Ivan’s mother, Katerina Braginsky, who had answered the door, had found Natalya’s boldness so endearing that she’d welcomed her inside.

“Ivan doesn’t have an official teacher, unfortunately,” she had explained. “He learned most of what he knows from watching me play.”

To her surprise, Natalya had brightened. “So you’re a pianist, too!”

“Well, I don’t perform anymore, but…”

“If Ivan learned from you, you must be really good!” Drawing herself to her full height, Natalya stared straight up at the adult, whose face showed nothing but amusement at the situation. “I want you to be my mentor.”

Katerina was easy to win over. “Oh, how adorable!” she exclaimed. “Vanyushka! Come out, come out! You have a visitor. She’s a fan of yours!”

“Not a fan,” Natalya said. “A challenger.”

In a hidden corner, Ivan shrunk further behind a potted plant.  

Later, Natalya’s parents would arrive in a panic. They explained that their daughter, after watching one of Ivan’s concerts at the Mariinsky, had burst into tears and refused to stop crying until she was allowed to meet Ivan and his teacher. They had thought that the experience would teach Natalya a lesson—that she couldn’t always get what she wanted. Imagine their surprise when they saw their daughter sitting at the Braginskys’ grand piano, her tiny legs dangling from the bench, while Ivan hid behind his mother.

“Your daughter has potential,” Katerina had told the Arlovskayas. “I hope you wouldn’t mind if I give her lessons. Free of charge.”

* * *

Natalya had been five years old then. Ivan was six.

When a tumour took Katerina's life, Ivan had just turned twelve. Natalya was eleven.

And when Ivan began to unravel, Natalya was the sole witness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three chapters and still no Yao? I know, I'm sorry, I'm terrible at pacing. I do want to flesh Natalya out a little, though—I don't want her just to be "that bitch", you know? Anyway, she's going to be a combination of Tsubaki and Emi from YLIA. You'll be seeing a lot of her. As for Ivan's mom, she's completely made up. She's basically Kousei's mom: important to the story, but not that important as a character. She'll show up a lot in flashbacks. 
> 
> Speaking of which, there's going to be a lot of time jumps in this story. Ivan writes the letter in 2029, teenage Ivan is in 2019, and anything that happens before that is...before that. If it ever gets confusing, please leave a comment and I'll try to fix it. 
> 
> The name of this chapter—Scenes from Childhood in English—is named after a piano cycle by Schumann (Again. I definitely need to pick a different composer next time.). It's a collection of thirteen simple, somewhat juvenile piano pieces, and they're all really pretty.


End file.
